bias............................

In all of American life, there is a bias towards the happy ending, toward the notion that human resilience and intellect will be a match for any problem.  This holds especially true for problem of white supremacy.  For white people who have not quite taken on the full load of ancestral debt but can sense its weight, there is a longing for some magic that might make the burden of slavery and all that followed magically vanish.  For blacks born under the burden, there is a need to believe that a better day is on the horizon, that their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives are not forever condemned to carry that weight, which white people can only but sense.  I felt this need whenever I spoke to audiences about my writing since, invariably, I would be asked what I could say that would give the audience hope.  I never knew how to answer the question.  The writers I loved, whom I sought to emulate, were mostly unconcerned with "hope."  But moreover—what if there was no hope at all?  Sometimes, I said as much and was often met with a kind of polite and stunned disappointment.

-Ta-Nehisi Coates,  We Were Eight Years In Power:  An American Tragedy